It remains Canada's deadliest mass killing.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canada was warned of a plot to bomb an Air India jetliner months before the 1985 attack that killed 329 people, but police failed to act on the information, a hearing was told on Monday.
The June 23, 1985, bombing of Air India Flight 182 over the Atlantic Ocean was history’s deadliest bombing of a civilian airliner.
Update, 2017:
Canada frees man convicted for 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people (The Guardian)
Update, 2022:
A timeline of the Air India case, from the bombings to the death of an old suspect (CBC)
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| Inderjit Singh Reyat walks outside B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver in this 2010 file photo. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) |
The bombing of the Air India flights was a coordinated effort between three trading partners (USA, India, Canada) and their intelligence agencies (CIA, RAW, CSIS). The informants may have been purchased by these agencies, and dressed in the Sikh uniform. The dangers of the Sikh uniform and Sikh name is that intruders, or spies, can also adopt it and infiltrate the community. Now, when it is coming out 20 years later that "L Singh" bought the ticket for Air India Flight 182, and that other "Sikhs" were involved, it is very easy for us Canadians to assume that it was genuine Sikhs who were complicit in this act. It is not unlikely that some of the individuals who carried out the bombing wore a turban and kept unshorn hair, but the planning and funding was not done by any Sikh organization, nor by any individual Sikh. In fact, it was done by the Indian government. The Indian government attacked the Golden Temple in June 1984, and sponsored riots against Sikhs in November. These were all part of their attempts to destroy the movement by Sikhs for fair judicial process, human rights, and equality in Punjab. The Sikhs were becoming too powerful, too influential, and the public of the world was supporting them because like the Monks of Tibet - they were an oppressed people demanding their rights, and Indira Gandhi was a self-absorbed tyrant. In order to erase all traces of the Sikh movement against this oppression, the Indian government took the above actions. They do not care about "collateral damage" or the loss of life whether those were Canadian or Indian nationals. They knew that the Air India tragedy would target the families of 329 people, the media and politicians of many countries, and the citizens around the world against the Sikhs and their struggle. The Indian government knew that by putting the blame for a horrendous disaster on innocent Sikhs by infiltrating the community and paying off a few individuals to pose as "militants," the Sikh community would be set back 100 years in their development and success around the world. With the black cloud of Air India hanging over the Sikhs of Canada, it has been extremely difficult for them to ask for Punjab to be restored to its pre-1947 state, with a state-level government and a capital city of its own. The Indian government was responsible for this tragedy. CSIS erased 190 or 250 wire taps for no other reason. Witnesses and news are coming about now, and haven't for 20 years, for the same reason. CSIS has worked very hard to put this partnership under the rug and pin Malik and Bagri for this crime, but they were not successful and instead their incompetency has been uncovered. However, with time not only will it show that they were incompetent, but actually complicit in the murder of 329 people on this flight and 2 people at Narita Airpot in Japan. This was not the act of any Sikh organization, but the organized operation of Indian intelligence to destroy a political opposition.
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